


The Chocolate Factory

by Shira_Royal



Category: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - All Media Types
Genre: Chocolate, Fluff, Male-Female Friendship, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, Sci-Fi, Snow, Something I wrote two years ago, an odd idea, but it kind of works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 12:43:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11967645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shira_Royal/pseuds/Shira_Royal
Summary: Charlie Bucket has had his story told, and so has Willy Wonka.  But what-or who-is the factory, exactly?





	The Chocolate Factory

She sat, and she stared, and she sighed.

She sat on an empty barrel that had once contained cinnamon sticks, and stared out of a window, down at a town that was, for the most part, neat and clean, except for a house at one end of town, a house with seven people in it.

To put it politely, it needed a paint job and a carpenter, preferably inexpensive.

In that house, she thought, there were people who were waiting for a second chance.

She sighed, because it had snowed a few days ago – heavily, unlike the few flurries that had been coming down for the past couple weeks – and she had wanted to go out, and catch snowflakes on her tongue. She had had to settle for reaching an arm out a window, and grabbing a handful of snow.

She reached out a hand now, and bit into a chocolate bar, first unwrapping it. She sighed again.

"Why did he think that a combination of mallow and fudge and nuts would work? The mallow gets mixed up with the nuts, and makes them gooey. Plus, the Totally Twisted part of the name sounds sort of desperate. I mean," she continued, talking to the snow that was falling down beside the window, "it's good, as always – if you don't think about the gooey part - but the name should be changed. Or at least edited."

"Why?"

She blinked. The snow had not answered her, given her a question for her to ponder over. She wasn't afraid of someone having snuck in. No one snuck in these days. No one went in, and no one went out. But that would change tomorrow.

"I get the Combo part," she answered finally, not turning around, tilting the bar up to the light so the name could be read. Finishing rather lamely, she added, "I just don't get the Totally Twisted part."

"They both begin with the letter T," the voice behind her said thoughtfully. "Don't people like that kind of thing? The words starting with the same letter?"

"Well," she said, aming for a haugthy accent, the kind British acctress used. "Since I'm a humanoid–"

"You run this entire factory better than I can," the voice interrupted, trying to calm her down.

"I am the factory," she exclaimed, forgetting the accent. "I'm this factory, I'm the one that makes sure everything is mixing smoothly, and I managed to get myself into a human, so don't say I'm not a humanoid, Willy."

"But humanoid sounds too sciencey," Willy Wonka said from behind her. "You're the living emblem of a chocolate factory–"

"And you're a chocolatier recluse–" she put in.

"See what I mean?" he asked. "It's not scientific. Candy and chocolate aren't scientific."

"About candy and chocolate, what's going to happen when you leave?" She said the last word as if it were forgien. "Why are you leaving at all?"

She knew the answer to the question already, but she wanted to try to change it.

"The person who does best at the character test will keep on making candy and chocolate," Wonka answered. "And I'm not really leaving. I'm going to wait until the child is old enough, and tell them all my candy secrets, and I'm going to retire. I'm getting old."

"You're no older than I am," she countered. "The ten years I've been here have aged me quicker than you think. Besides, you aren't that old, Willy. You didn't consider the fact that the Oompa-Loompas are worried about you retiring. I'm worried about you retiring. And the four golden ticket winners are twits. They don't have a single redeeming quality."

"Only four of the golden ticket winners might turn out to be twits, or may turn out not to be," Wonka answered. "Besides, we still don't know about the fifth golden ticket winner. He – or she – could still turn out all right."

"I suppose so," she sighed. "But the tour's tomorrow. They better find the ticket quick."

"Yes," Wonka agreed. "Factory–"

"You know," she inturrupted. "That's a big improvement on Dulce."

"But it means sweet in Latin. You are the living form of a chocolate factory; chocolate factories make sweets," Wonka said.

"It took you a month to stop calling me Dulce," Factory muttered. "I had been around for two weeks by then, and it took you that long to figure out that Dulce wasn't going to cut it." She snorted. "Factory is much better, even though it is short for 'Living Form of a Chocolate Factory."'

"I'm better at naming candies," Wonka said, trying to justify himself.

"Right," Factory nodded, sarcasm creeping into her voice. "Ow!" Her hand, on the windowsill, gripped tightly and turned pale.

"Is it the gumdrop boilers again?" Wonka asked, worried.

Factory didn't hear him.

She felt like she was floating, as though she were floating up in the air like a balloon. Her feet didn't seem to be touching the ground as she stared at the golden ticket peering up at her from under a Wonka candy bar rapper.

With a gasp, Factory was back in her own self.

The changing of points of view had happened four times before.

The first had been when she had encoutered a confusing taste after chewing a bite of chocolate. The taste had turned out to be the first golden ticket.

The second had been when her father had, at last, given her the second golden ticket. She had wanted it so badly, and now she had it, thanks to hordes of workers.

The third had been when, in the middle of a movie about gansters, she had been chewing away though a pile of candy bars her mother had brought her, and found a golden ticket inside one of them. Reading it had caused her to miss out on the ending of the movie.

The fourth had been when she stared happily at the golden ticket. She hadn't really expected to get it, but now she could get back to gum chewing.

This fifth time had been different. With this ticket, it felt like she owned half the world. Anything was possible; her family would get enough food to eat now!

"You put the final ticket in a Whipple-Scrumtious Fudgemallow Delight, right?" she asked, her hold on the windowsill relaxing.

"Yes, I did," Wonka said. "Really though, you alright?"

"I'm fine," Factory said, blinking away golden sparkles. "It's just the last kid found the final golden ticket. He's just in time, too."

She frowned as she heard a faint noise coming from below the high window. "Wait, what's that?"

Factory opened the window, and poked her head out, just in time to see a small boy race past the entrence to the factory, something gleaming gold in one of his hands.

"I'll be seeing you!" he called. "I'll be seeing you soon!"

"That's him," she said to Willy as she shut the window. "And he's not like the others. He's kinder."

"That's great!" Wonka said, smiling at the window, out at the snowflakes and wind and sky. "He must be feeling tremendously happy right now. Did you get any sense of where he lives?"

Factory traced a path with her eyes through the streets. Her eyes landed on the not-so-clean house at the edge of town, the house with seven people in it, waiting for another chance.

The same small boy, she noticed, was coming up the path that wound through snow up to the house.

"He lives right there," she said, pointing to the house. "He's the closest one out of all of them. Who do think he'll take with him?"

Wonka shrugged. "But we won't have to wait long to know. You know, now that's everyone's found their ticket at last, I feel like we can all just relax a bit more."

"The Oompaa-Loompas don't need relaxing," Factory pointed out. "They think everything's a joke, including tall people."

"The last finder isn't that tall," Wonka said musingly. "Maybe they will find him less of a joke. Do you think the rooms are a good choice?"

"Yes, Willy," Factory sighed. "I've told you a million times, there's no way a girl who wants everything can resist a fluffy squirrel…"


End file.
